


the knight or the sword

by natlet



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: "thats not how magic works" yeah i know, Body Horror, Dissociation, M/M, Religious Content, Suicidal Thoughts, general weird mental fuckery, its grindelwald idk what to say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 17:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natlet/pseuds/natlet
Summary: Credence to the rescue





	the knight or the sword

**Author's Note:**

> i rarely write anything that requires warnings at all and was unsure how to tag this; i decided to over-warn rather than under-warn. if anyone would like clarification or further explanation, please feel free to [send me an ask](http://natlet.tumblr.com/ask), anonymous or otherwise, at my tumblr.

It fits too neatly into the black sluggish churn of his days to identify itself as a rescue. Hands on his shoulders, turning him over, sharp fingers digging in under his arms. The sensation of being moved. The tangle of spells he's caught in must be starting to wear off; he can feel that, the force exerted on the body, clearly enough to be sure he's not the one doing it, but he is in fact experiencing it. The spells are wearing off, Graves thinks again, and lets it crystallize, curls around the thought tight and warm and welcome like a dog invited to the hearth, one true thing momentarily still his own. The spells are wearing off. The spells are wearing off. The spells are wearing off, so probably, he's returned. 

Graves locks himself away. His wards won't hold, not against a wizard of Grindelwald's power ( _Oh, but darling,_ Grindelwald will say, laughing like Graves' efforts are pleasing, or amusing, or both. _It's so sweet of you to have tried_ ); by now the net of defensive magic he draws around himself starts to fray again almost simultaneously with Grindelwald's return to the house, but his heart or his training keep him spinning and weaving it back together anyway, every chance he gets, one more time. 

 

-

 

"Mr. Graves," someone says, and Graves thinks: _Credence._

Grindelwald does not call him Mr. Graves. Grindelwald calls him _Percival_ , because that's what his mother had called him. When he's happy or what passes for it, it's _darling_ , which makes his pale face tear into a toothy smile that's starting to look a little too much like Graves' own. When he's not, he just calls Graves _body_ , which somehow is both easiest and hardest at the same time. 

"Mr. Graves, please." 

"Our boy is so sweet, darling," Grindelwald purrs in his ear. He has Graves propped up in the chair in front of the mirror, and has just finished trimming his hair. In a minute he'll pick up the straight razor that lies next to the basin and shave Graves' face, skin pulled taut under clawed callused fingers, the blade left just dry enough to sting.

It's important, he'll tell Graves, surprisingly earnest as the razor nicks at Graves' throat, that they take the time to care for their body. They'll never know when they might find it useful again. 

Hands on shoulders, skin against skin, warm rough breaths echoing in the air. 

"So eager to please us." Grindelwald - in his own skin for the moment - strokes Graves temples to collarbone, nails dragging along the scalp, hair combed into some sort of order. "So desperate to be what we need. You did well, finding him for us." He doesn't always, but this time he shares the memory; an alley, quick rough wet-sounding breaths, the blunted ridges of Credence's spine at the back of his neck, the rush of scent as he'd swayed in close. "Doesn't our name sound good in his mouth? He still thinks we're going to teach him. Poor, sweet, stupid little thing. It'll almost be a shame to leave him behind, won't it?" 

Graves hates him. He hates him, he hates him even though he has built a career and a life on pointedly and purposefully never caring enough about anything to create an emotion as strong as _hatred_. Carefully cultivated apathy has kept him sharp, kept his mind clear, kept his sense and intuition and reason unsullied and uncompromised by those extremes. But he hates Gellert Grindelwald. He thinks that's probably a concession he can afford to make. 

"Please wake up." 

Grindelwald's hands on flesh that should feel like Graves' own, but doesn't. He sets the razor aside, and reaches for Graves' pomade, spreading a clump of it across his fingers before he begins to style the hair. The smell of it will be ruined, for Graves, after this. He hates Grindelwald for that, too. 

"We're getting closer, darling," Grindelwald says. His voice is low and warm and conspiratorial, intimate in a way that has Graves wanting to claw his way out of what had been his skin, leave this body behind for Grindelwald to do as he likes with, if only he could get _away_. "The obscurial is so near I can smell it. It'll be ours in a matter of days." He tips the chin one way, then the other; smiles, when he's satisfied, and shifts smoothly and easily into Graves' skin. "Aren't we lovely," he murmurs, bending down to rest Graves' chin on Graves' shoulder, his faces side by side in the mirror, and Graves can't argue. He can't even close his eyes. 

"Mr. Graves, please. You're too heavy, I can't move you, you have to wake up, please." 

Grindelwald has no trouble moving him. Grindelwald can transport him around the house with magic, but usually chooses to do it the No-Maj way, the body cradled in his arms like a lover, an offering, a bride. Grindelwald moves him where he wants, and doesn't say please, and has never called him Mr. Graves. 

He presses his lips to Graves' temple, and whispers: _"Crucio."_

The worst part is, even to this, Graves cannot react. 

It's different than the non-reaction he'd practiced. That could have its signs, its valves to release the pressure - if he needed, if they were subtle. A single clenched muscle. The pace and pause and depth of his breath.

He could at least close his eyes. 

"Wake up," someone whispers, but neither of the Graves' mouths move. His own blank gaze in the mirror, reflecting back at him, an echoing hall full of dark sharpened teeth. He thinks of a rending. Pictures tearing himself free of the body, escaping its hold like quicksand, floating between the sucking walls of its flesh. It's probably not a healthy way to bear the curse; it certainly hadn't been covered in his training. But those tested methods have long since been discarded, found wanting for the endless stretch of this possession, rejected and set aside. He's known since Grindelwald took him that he's in uncharted territory. He's had to find his own way. 

"Mr. Graves," someone says, and there's a hand in his hair but in the mirror neither of him have moved. "They're coming for us. We have to go, I need your help, I can't - " 

Grindelwald does not ask for his help. Grindelwald takes - his job, his face, his home. Grindelwald presses a kiss and a second curse to the forehead, and _does not call him Mr. Graves_. 

Inside himself Graves reaches - tentatively - out toward the aching flesh. In the mirror, first one Graves, and then the other, begin to fade. Cobwebbing darkness in the corners of the room, blooming at the edge of Graves' vision, condensing around him like a cloud. There is a new magic here. 

No - not new. Different. 

"Please don't make me leave you here alone." 

Graves reaches harder, and feels himself - shift. 

Grindelwald's magic splits and Graves floods back into the body like syrup, like mud, something thick and sluggish and hard to control.

It fucking _hurts_. 

He reels, in there, for a minute. Feels the back arch. The strain and stretch and burn in the muscles. He feels the mouth open, hears its harsh gasping breaths. 

"Mr. Graves?" 

He forces forces _forces_ the eyes open. Looks up at the source of the magic. He's slim and dark-haired and angled, blood and soot streaked across pale skin, one eye blackened and swollen and he's looking right at Graves. He isn't Grindelwald. He's the most beautiful fucking thing Graves has ever seen. 

Graves manages: "You're not him." 

The Barebone boy - _Credence_ \- says: "Neither are you." 

He can feel the house crumbling around them. The wards are torn open, his own and the ones Grindelwald had laid on top of them alike. It's snowing - he can taste it in the air. He feels fragile, unsteady, just barely balanced. On the edge of something. 

"Who's coming," Graves says, after a moment, remembering. His voice is thin and weak and cracking after months of disuse, shredding its way up out of his throat. 

"I don't know." Credence's hands clutch rhythmically at Graves' shoulders. "They tried to kill me. They said they're coming to find you. We have to go. We have to hide." His eyes are milky-white at the edges and Graves can see the cobweb magic blooming inside of his skin. "They tried to kill me," Credence says again, and the magic strains him at the seams. He wonders if Credence means MACUSA or Grindelwald. He wonders if it matters.

"Do you know somewhere that's safe right now?" 

Credence shakes his head. "Please help me," he says. "I - I can't go back there. I can't." 

Graves tries to move, but the body's response is too heavy, listless and slow. He's not going anywhere the No-Maj way, not right now. He doesn't think he can Apparate them; he's almost sure he can't do it wandlessly. He doesn't have the strength. His magic is there but it's weak and small and frightened, skipping away from him, staying just out of reach. Grindelwald took his wand, he remembers, with the same oily horror that had slid over him every time Grindelwald had showed it to him, held it in front of his face, trailed its cool ebony tip across his skin. Grindelwald took his wand, his magic, coaxed and convinced it to obey him and it had clearly suffered for its mistake. Graves wonders what songs he'd taught it to sing. 

They don't have a wand. They don't have a choice. 

"Credence," he says, softly. "Do you remember the very first time you saw me? Near Battery Park?" 

The business with Tina had weighed heavily. She'd been too promising an auror for a mistake like that; Graves had thought maybe if he saw the boy for himself, he'd understand. And he did. Credence was crawling with magic. It was so strong in him Graves remembers being stunned he hadn't felt this boy out sooner. It had been just before noon, and he'd stayed half a block away, but Credence had met his eyes and made every streetlamp for a mile flare on at once. 

In the too-still remains of Graves' house, Credence nods. "I remember the lights." 

"You did that," Graves says, and feels Credence shudder around him. "Did you know that? Credence, that was your magic." 

"You - _he_ said I couldn't do it." Credence's voice is thickening, some dark rich undertone swelling up. "He said he couldn't teach me." 

"He was full of shit," Graves says. "You have so much magic in you I can taste it. I'll teach you everything, Credence, I promise." He doesn't know what he's saying. Credence lets out a single tearing sob and Graves turns his face in toward Credence's chest, breathes hard and deep and steady against him, like it's going to help. "Think about that day for me, Credence, can you do that? Think about the lights." 

"Okay," Credence whispers. "Okay." 

"Hold tight to me," Graves says. Credence curls around him, clutching Graves against his chest, bony knees against Graves' shoulderblades and his breath coming quick in Graves' hair. Graves thinks: _The summer house. Upstate, on the lake. Fireflies at the edge of the forest at dusk, the bonfire, charming fish to the end of the dock._ He calls up the muted flickering light of his magic, gathers it around him, lets it free again to spread and reach and draw out whatever it can. "Credence. Tell me what you're thinking about." 

"The lights." Credence's head pressed up hard against his, the welcome clawing grip of his hands, the blood-iron scent on his breath. "How you saw me." 

"Don't let go," Graves says, and thinks, _somewhere safe,_ and Apparates. 

They reappear at the edge of the meadow, just inside of the wards. Graves manages to keep himself in the body long enough to make sure he hasn't splinched either of them too obviously, long enough to check the interior wards around the cabin, ensure they haven't been breached. He's almost surprised to find them all how he'd left them, closed up quiet and tight and still. They'll part to let him and Credence in, and close back up behind them. If Credence can get them there. 

"Credence. Can you get us to that cabin?" 

"Where are we?" 

He sounds remarkably steady for someone who's just side-along Apparated for their first time. Graves will have to point that out to him. Later. "Somewhere safe," he says, and lets himself slide.

 

-

 

One must learn their body, Grindelwald tells him, the first night. One must know it well. 

He's angry. Graves is pretty fucking angry, too. Grindelwald stands glaring at him from the foot of the bed, arms crossed, just in Graves' sight. Graves wants to return the glare, but he can't move his fucking eyes. 

It never should have happened, but he'd been distracted. The business with Tina. The Barebone boy. Too many nights in a row blurred away in Invigoration Draughts, his mind spread too thin. He'd been careless, let himself slip. The sun had been setting across the river, warm summer air teasing at his shirt collar when he'd rematerialized in another alley a few blocks away, off St. James. It had seemed like such a nice night for a walk. Grindelwald had managed to hit him with the curse from across the damn street, walked him placidly home, met him in his own front hall. 

He'd been so fucking _stupid_. 

Grindelwald paces back and forth across the edge of Graves' vision. One must be able to rely on their body, he says. His magic is like nothing Graves has ever seen, sparking raw and wild and searing blue-white along his skin. It feels untamed and uncontrolled and unpredictable where it's licking at Graves' mind, throwing arcing light and shadows and Graves has never shrunk from any magic but if he could he would crawl on hands and knees to get away from _this_. This magic, he is very sure he wants nothing to do with. 

There is nothing, Grindelwald says, more valuable than knowledge. He Vanishes Graves' clothing clean off his body, the charm seething and careless enough it also Vanishes the duvet out from under him. He says, knowledge is currency. Knowledge carries with it security, and ownership, and power. 

The worst part is, Graves thinks - still calm enough inside the shell of his body that he's almost surprising himself - the worst part is, he knows exactly who and what Grindelwald is, and they haven't even really reached a point where Graves would argue with him. 

One must know their body, Grindelwald says, and smiles, and sets his wand aside. One must know their body, so it will not betray them. 

Grindelwald touches him. Grindelwald puts his rough hands on Graves' skin and begins to explore and that calm detached part of Graves wonders if this is a requirement of this magic itself, or of the sickness it's infused with. The body, Grindelwald says, is just a suit for the self. He traces along the broad slanting line of Graves' shoulders, his hands chased by bright crackling magic low across Graves' belly, down the cut of his hips. This one has taken good care of itself, he tells Graves. This one will fit him beautifully. 

The cabin smells of dust and raw pale wood and the pine trees that cluster thick around it, spilling down the slope and crowding right up to the edges of the lake. "Easy," Credence says, soft, nearby. Graves feels the bed dip on one side and a tentative touch to a knee and he's scrabbling away before he can stop himself, terror sparking hot and wild in his throat. "It's just me, Mr. Graves." The touch is firmer now against the knee - _his_ knee, he thinks, fights for it - and Credence is talking low and fast and steady, _it's me, it's just me, it's okay, easy._

Graves makes his eyes open, makes them trace the exposed ceiling beams up toward where they disappear into shadow. "You're hurt," he hears Credence say, "you're hurt, Mr. Graves, just let me clean you up, okay? Just let me help and then I'll leave you alone." 

This is what he'd learned in training: _submit. Remember it will pass._

Credence's touch is damp and gentle and quick and Graves finds he's glad for it - the steady soothing pressure, more welcome than expected. The instant wordless knowledge that it's Credence touching him, and no one else. Graves watches a clean white cloth come away from him streaked red and black, dirt and blood and soot from the skin to the water, wiped up and wrung away by Credence's sure hands. He is at once both similar to the Credence that Graves had met, that Grindelwald had shown him, and so, so different; his voice, his face, his slim long-fingered hands. His impossible magic, so striking it had become instantly familiar. But there's a confidence to him now, a sort of calm balance that had been missing entirely from the half-shadow memories Grindelwald shared, the real one Graves clung to, swimming deep in the hollow of himself. Like maybe, in some ways, his face had been worn as well. 

Grindelwald parts Graves' legs, runs his palms up the insides of Graves' thighs. It's well-suited, he tells Graves, for what he needs of it. It wears its clothing and authority and power well. It comes with access and credibility and connections, and most importantly - Grindelwald leans in close, breath crawling hot across Graves' skin - most importantly, it's already of interest to the boy. And the boy will lead him to his prize. 

"Easy," Credence whispers, his hands gentle as he loosens Graves' tie, undoes his collar, the first few buttons on his vest. "I won't hurt you. I'm almost done." Cool water pooled in the hollows of bones, Credence's thumb pressed to the fluttering pulse in the throat and his voice low and constant, _shh, Mr. Graves, easy._ He wonders if Credence can feel it trembling, cowering away as he covers it with a blanket. Graves breathes old wool and mothballs and the sharp bitter smell of lye soap handmade by a woman who was never Credence's mother. 

"Credence," he says, and the boy is there, slim fingers brushing over knuckles where they're clenched in the edge of the blanket. "Credence, you - " 

Should go, Graves can't quite say; he can feel their magic answering anyway, sharp and raw and licking at his mind, at the places where Credence touches him - Grindelwald's searing blue-white and that dark cobweb heat and the faint echoed traces of his own, all tangled and melded and tied up together, like that's what had led Credence back to him, like it could - 

"Shh," Credence says, and Graves feels pressure, long and warm and close against the back, Credence's arms pulling in tight. "You need to rest. You said we're safe, right? It'll be okay." 

_That's right, darling. Everything will be just fine._

 

-

 

It wasn't a polyjuice potion. It wasn't any kind of magic Graves recognized, or even understood. He had expected dark magic from Grindelwald. He had trained for that. But he had expected old magic; dense and musty and half-forgotten, sure, but something that was, at least in some way, known. He'd never thought to expect this. It resembled some of the more advanced transfiguration spells Graves was familiar with, but wasn't one of them; this magic was fresh and young and volatile, curling and seeping into his mind in a way he'd felt instinctively was wrong. This magic was unknown to him. 

It starts to leave him the next morning, pouring out of him in a river, thick and dark and sour in his mouth as he hunches in a corner and vomits it up until he feels his ribs clenching on nothing, fluttering and folding around the empty space in his chest like bone-feathered bird's wings. 

"Mr. Graves," he hears Credence say, his voice tight and panicked. "You're bleeding inside." 

He remembers, with Credence's hand lighting soft and trembling at the back of his neck, that this is what an intestinal bleed looks like. He tries not to wonder why Credence might recognize that. "I'm fine," he grits out, and - predictably - tugs away from Credence to be sick again, his palms braced flat against the smooth dusty floorboards, the body betraying the mind. Like coffee grounds, he thinks, looking at it, and sees what Credence sees. "It's not that." To be fair, it does bear at least an initial resemblance. He watches it gather and swirl and sink down into the cracks, like it had never existed at all. "It's magic." 

"Like mine?" 

Credence's voice is a whisper and Graves shakes his head, hard, though it makes him feel like his brain is slamming around loose and untethered in his skull. "No," he says, firm. Firmer than he's expecting. "Not like yours. This is - " 

Another flood of it, his guts folded over and twisting, dark wet sick puddled on the floor in front of him, licking curiously at the tips of his fingers where he's trying to claw into the wood. "This is bad magic," Credence says, behind him. "This is what Ma thought it was." 

Graves nods, and lets Credence pull him back to the bed, away from the remnants of Grindelwald's magic still soaking through the floor. He is so, so tired. He lets Credence gather the body into his arms, lets him stroke its hair, lets him rock it gently, like a child, like a doll. _That's it, darling,_ Grindelwald whispers somewhere, and somewhere closer, Credence says, soft and practiced and reverent, "O, Lord." _Rest, dear body,_ and Credence says, louder, "Look down from heaven." _Behold visit and relieve this thy servant. Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy, give him comfort and sure confidence in thee, defend him from the danger of the enemy, and keep him in perpetual peace and safety._

 _Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen._

 

-

 

He wants to be low. He wants to be in the dirt. 

He peels himself down to skin and meat and bone and spreads it all out across cool damp deep-smelling earth, wishing it would swallow him whole, wishing he could become it, firm and sure and unchanging. 

Credence finds him in the root cellar under the cabin, naked, huddled in the rough-dug far corner where wall curves into floor and forms the cup he's poured himself into. Credence kneels beside him, and reaches for him, and doesn't touch him. "Mr. Graves," he says, and Graves can feel the body straining toward the sound of his voice. "Come back. Come with me. He's gone now, it's okay." 

Fall must have been wet and warm. The frost hasn't crept this far down yet and Graves thinks if he tries he could slip out some side door and crawl underneath it, let it close up around him and sleep until spring. He'd dreamed of late August thunderstorms, light ripping through the flat-clouded sky, heat spilling out across the lap of the hills that rise just up the river. He'd missed the trees changing in the park, all red and green and gold, the bite of fat juicy apples still warm off the branch. He could do it, he thinks. Dig down into the mud. Rest. Just wait for it all to come back. 

_That's right, darling,_ he thinks, or doesn't. _Leave it. Let it go._

Grindelwald had shown him things he'd known to be true, and things he'd known to be not true, and things he couldn't be sure of either way. He'd shown Graves the smoking crater where the Woolworth building had been, and then the new curtains he'd decided to hang in his - _Graves'_ \- office. His aurors lying scattered and motionless in the rubble, and then columns of them marching down Broadway, their shining upturned faces watching Grindelwald speak. Tina suspended in the death cell, then Picquery, then Graves himself. Credence and his mother entering the lobby, flanked by No-Maj police. Credence laid out naked and panting in the bed next to them. The city in ice. The city in flames. 

"What a beautiful world we'll build together, darling," Grindelwald would whisper, his visions for it shifting and blurring as they play out on the ceiling of Graves' bedroom, Grindelwald's own body stretched out beside the one he's not using yet, his long fingers scratching down the center of its bare chest. "Such wonders we'll show them."

 _Which world is this, dear body - yours, or still mine?_

"He's still in here," Graves says, and Grindelwald preens in his mind, floating and soaking and curling around in his head like a sleek spoiled cat. "Credence. He's still in here with me." 

Credence takes Graves' face in his hands. "It's okay." One palm smoother than the other against Graves' cheeks, the magic hooked in deep where Grindelwald had healed him. Is it that, Graves wonders, that he's pulled toward? Would they want this body, either of them, had it never been worn? "Don't listen." Credence holds Graves closer, like he hears - his nose against Graves' cheek, his breath warm and sweet and Graves can feel sobbing, hands clutched on Credence's shoulders.

Credence's lips on skin. Credence says, "Come with me." 

Credence says, "Come to the water." 

Credence draws him up, out of the mud, into the sharp cold air. Graves is filthy - they both are - he can feel it clinging to him like an extra skin. There's cobwebs in his hair and cobwebs in Credence's eyes and at the shoreline the waves lap cold and curious against a narrow strip of coarse dark sand. Credence walks in backwards - he's barefoot, Graves' hands clutched in his and his eyes steady and Graves follows him, can only follow him, lets Credence urge him deeper as smooth round pebbles slip and shift underneath. 

Nearby, outside the wards, the cracking flares of arrivals and Graves folds himself in, awaiting the blow, the curse and the kiss and the light. The body - he doesn't want it. He doesn't need it. Why should he? It doesn't belong to him any more, has been touched and marked and tainted like his house, his clothes, his fucking pomade, his aurors and his bed and his whole ruined life. He wants to crawl outside of it, some shedding pale thing, leave it behind like the husk that it is and find a new home in the dark padded cage under Credence's ribs. _Let go,_ he says. _Let it go, darling. Come with me._

"He's coming for me," Graves says, and he can feel them - his aurors, Seraphina, can hear them calling to him from the shore. _Step away from him, Credence. Mr. Graves, come with us._ "Credence. He'll come." 

"No," Credence says, "open your eyes," and Graves looks up at the ragged dome hanging under the sky, all smoke and ash and flame. Grindelwald's obscurus, wrapped around them like a shield. 

"Credence," he says. "Oh, Credence. It was you all along." 

"He can't have us," Credence says, and the obscurus cries out, closes in tighter around them. "Do you understand? Nobody can have us." 

He can't see the shoreline. He can't remember why he might want to. What else he might need, outside the dark. "You came for me." 

"Of course I did," Credence says. "You saw me."

"I don't want to go with them," Graves says, and he feels Credence nod. 

"Then hold tight to me," he says. "Don't let go."

 

-

 

_The New York Ghost: 19 December 1926._

_THE SEARCH CONTINUES!_

_Nearly two weeks after the discovery and capture of Gellert Grindelwald, MACUSA's Major Investigations Department is still reporting no sign of missing former Director Percival Graves. According to unnamed sources inside the department, reports that Graves had been sighted earlier in the month at a vacation home owned by his family proved to be unfounded. In a statement released this morning, President Seraphina Picquery appointed Senior Auror Veronica Greenleaf to serve in his stead. Graves has been missing since early December._

**Author's Note:**

> the working title for this gdoc was "why do bad things (hp) happen to good people (me)" and i just thought you all should know


End file.
